Ottawa - Canada - April 15 - 2015- Stephen Harper was elected in 2008 as a no-nonsense conservative who promised to shrink the size of the government and reduce its role in the economy. His redmeat conservatism promised to lower taxes and usher in an era of smaller government. But after five years in office, his governance revolution has stalled.

New hires in the civil service and military have added more than 30,000 people to the government’s payroll. Spending jumped both pre- and post recession.The plan to restore fiscal balance and return the national accounts to the black has failed. The government’s actual and projected deficits are larger than any the Liberals managed to achieve.

On fiscal management, Harper is hardly a textbook conservative. The Christian and Missionary Alliance preacher espouses smaller government and significantly, many Canadian families like what they see from some of his policies. Families get small tax credits for sports equipment, apprenticeship tools, and trucker’s lunches. Harper has added some big-ticket items such as the tax-free savings account and added to the child tax benefit that replaced the discredited Keynesian-inspired family allowance.

For young families, these giveaways lend credibility to his “conservative-who-cares” image. Ideologically, though, his government revolution will not be remembered for these small gestures. If one looks at the bigger picture, the Harper government cannot claim to be minimalist in the livesof Canadians. It has already added $200,000,000,000 to the national debt, and only some of this was used to fight the recession. The government’s approach to the massive structural deficit it created is to ignore the opinions of experts who advocate restoring the cuts to the GST and eliminating any further tax cuts to Canada’s corporations.

Ronald Reagan in the United States and Brian Mulroney were “tax-cut” conservatives who spent billions and created a poisoned chalice of massive debt mismanagement. Harper’s own agenda is not very different in broad outline from that of other conservative leaders, like Ronald Reagan, who ran up massive deficits. However, his made-in-Canada, kick-ass conservatism has changed the institutional makeup of Canada and its state /citizen culture.

The HST has jacked up the cost of consumer goods, and the tax grab pushed Gordon Campbell to resign as the premier of British Columbia. Globally, Canada’s role has been downgraded, as the Harper government has become an avatar of American geopolitics in Afghanistan and elsewhere. Human rights and middle-powership, once the foreign policy signature of Canada, have been put on the back burner. Canadians live in a more unequal society than ever before, and Harper’s goal to gift more public resources to private enterprise goes further than those his Liberal predecessors lavished on corporate Canada. His tough-on-crime legislation and his low profile management of the Canada – US relationship have paid handsome dividends in his political heartland.

Many in the media portray his “bite -by -bite” approach in Parliament as a winning strategy against a lack- lustre opposition. He has cut the public service through attrition rather than a bloody - minded wholesale restructuring of government. If you cut enough muscle, it goes without saying, the government cannot continue to row or steer the machinery of the state effectively. For a prime minister who prefers stealth to accountability, what better way to achieve the first and most difficult of his governance objectives? There is none better.

Michael Ignatieff is the weakest Liberal leader since John Turner. The struggle for control between the Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin loyalists left the Liberals divided, feckless, and confused in the eyes of the Canadian public. The Liberal Party has been kicked around in the rough and tumble of “no-rules” partisanship in this minority government. Harper’s mixture of ruthless pragmatism in dealing with Parliament, the micromanagement of government, and the relentless strategy of one-way messaging has provided him with the tools to govern as if he had a majority. He has centralized more power in the Prime Minister’s Office than had any of his predecessors; the result is that he has almost total control over every aspect of government, from Cabinet ministers to the civil service on downward. The critical test remains, can Harper succeed in winning over the public to his political brand of conservatism? So far, he has not found a way to bridge the growing divide between his values and the priorities of Canadians.

The Trust Factor: What You See Is Not Who He Really Is

Nik Nanos is one of Canada’s best pollsters in tracking the shifting moods and expectations of Canadians. A February 14, 2011 poll revealed that none of Harper’s red-meat issues are top priorities for Canadians. Nanos asked over one thousand Canadians, What is the most important national issue of concern? Health care, at 22 percent, was the topr esponse; jobs and the economy came second, while 10 percent prioritized the environment. Only 5 percent of respondents put debt and deficit reduction as their top priority.

For the Harper government, the million dollar question is how to increase national support from the current 35.9 percent to win a majority government. Pollsters tell us that 35 percent of Canadians would give the Harper clan 138 seats if an election were held today.That is 5 seats less than they currently hold. The Liberals, even under the lack lustre leadership of Ignatieff, continue to garner the support of almost 30 percent of Canadians. Amazingly, the Liberal brand remains a powerful vote-catcher. If an election were held today, projections claim that the Iggy Liberals could pickup an additional 10 or more seats in the House,. Believe it or not.

The next Parliament will be larger with new seats created in British Columbia, Alberta, and Ontario, reflecting fast-growing urban areas. However,these are not likely to alter Harper’s chances for forming a majority. In 2008, the Conservatives were 13 seats shy of a majority. On his website, threehundredeight.blogspot.com, Éric Grenier has created an electoral profile of the new ridings, which shows that Harper stands a reasonable chance of taking only three out of the seven new seats. Much will change between today and election day. The New Democratic Party (NDP) may bear the full brunt of the current state of disunity on the left. It is almost axiomatic that as Liberal fortunes rise, the New Democrats numbers nosedive.They are fighting for the loyalty of an immense number of centre-left Canadians. According to current scenarios, the NDP would lose to the Liberal and Conservative front-runners in almost every part of the country except Quebec and the Maritimes.

Canada’s political map has changed since the Liberals’ repeated successes between the 1960s and 1980s, when their status as Canada’s governing party was unchallengeable with Ontario and Quebec voters in their back pocket. Today, Canada’s political system is both regionalized and fragmented. In the standoff between Canada’s four political parties, each one has a sizable regional political base, but no single party has a winning national strategy. The electoral heartland of all of Canada’s political parties has been regionalized to an unprecedented degree.

The Ethnic Vote

The breakthrough in this unwieldy political landscape lies in Harper finding a framing issue around which to swing anywhere from 10 to 20 seats to his favour. His target audience and potential vote bank—Canada’s ethnic voters--stand between Harper’s big victory and failure. A leaked document reveals that the ultra-secretive Conservative election machine’s plan of attack is to blitz Toronto’s and Vancouver’s immigrant communities with TV ads, radio messaging and social media networking. The four target ethnic groups are Chinese, South Asians, Ukrainians, and Jews; communities that inhabit suburban ridings and have voted Liberal for generations may determine the outcome of the next election.

Harper’s work is cut out for him. Tories fare worst with South Asian and Chinese voters, who remember the anti-immigrant policies of the Reform Party and Harper’s role leading the attack on Canada’s immigration-friendly policies. In the Indo-Canadian community, Harper hopes to capitalize on their opposition to same-sex marriage and split their vote. The stakes are high and the question is this: Will Canada’s multicultural train switch tracks to embrace Harper’s hard-line conservatism with its pragmatic edge? Experts argue that his party’s chances at splitting off chunks of the vote from the Liberals are much exaggerated. Missing from this picture is the deep well of voter distrust around Harper’s policies as well as his leadership. The distrust factor has become the most important liability after five years in office. There is a lot about his management style to upset Canadians.Harper’s most dim-witted policy mistake was the attack on Statistics Canada’s long-form census and the fabricated argument that the census violated the privacy of Canadians. The subtext is that the vital social information the long form provides is a critical tool for Canadians to understand how their society functions, where it is succeeding, and where the big and small gaps are. What Canadians saw was a political leader who forced the head of Statistics Canada to resign in protest and on principle. Canadians were not wrong to ask themselves, what does Harper fearfrom this strategic information-gathering exercise? Is it rational?

﻿The Alienated Centre

The dumbest thing that Harper has done in the last five years is anger and alienate centre, liberal, and left Canadians, who constitute well over 50 percent of voters. If Bloc support is included, this grows to over two-thirds of the Canadian electorate 2008 budget statement that precipitated Harper’s greatest political crisis - prorogation and the short-lived, ill-conceived attempt at governance by a Liberal / NDP coalition with Bloc support stands out as his greatest blunder.

Harper prorogued Parliament for two months in order to avoid testing the confidence of the House in his policies as required by the Westminster model of parliamentary government. His unwavering support for environmentally disastrous projects like the oilsands has hurt his electoral chances in large urban centres, with young and first-time voters and with angry environmentalists. Without the support of the broad centre, Harper will not get his cherished majority.

For a brilliant tactician, Harper’s gaffes, mistakes, and miscalculations are self-inflicted—the product of his rigid ideology and personal temperament and hence his greatest burden. This kind of ideological head-butting sends a viral message to many Canadians that this government cannot be trusted. It is a government that prides itself in one-way messaging to Canadians; it has no feedback loops and is not engaged with the public. It acts in a discriminatory and mean-spirited way to those who disagree with its ideological ends, and it takes pride in being a government whose agenda does not include social justice.

In Canada’s fragmented, regionalized political system, Harper’s governance revolution is founded on the black arts of secrecy and stealth as much as ideology. What Canadians fear most about his conservative revolution manqué is not knowing what other programs would be dismantled, lost, or marginalized if he possessed the jewel in the crown - a majority government.

The Harper government doesn’t hate older people as long as they work until they drop.

Toronto - Canada - May 10 - 2013 - Every crisis creates an opportunity. The Liberals used the recession of the ’90s to gut welfare and employment insurance. The Conservatives are using this crisis to take apart pensions.

That is the significance of the federal government’s surprise decision to involve itself directly in the union-management negotiations of 49 crown corporations.It has singled out Canada Post, Via Rail and the CBC. Up to now, most attention has focused on the CBC. Critics say the Harper Conservatives are trying to intimidate staff of the public broadcaster in order to reap more favourable coverage. And perhaps they are. But if so, this will be a side benefit for the Conservatives. Their real aim, alluded to cryptically in the last budget, is to take on the public-sector unions over pensions.

What the government doesn’t trumpet so loudly is the fact that a successful assault on the unionized public sector, by crippling what is left of organized labour in Canada, will put more downward pressure on everyone’s wages and benefits. At one level, the current economic slump is a godsend for the right.First, as in any slump, high unemployment exerts downward pressure on wages proper.

More important perhaps, the key measure used to fight unemployment — low interest rates — is wreaking havoc with the system of employer-sponsored pension plans developed after World War II. In this low-return environment, such plans simply can’t earn enough investment income to cover their obligations.

Some private firms have responded by, in effect, eliminating real pensions and replacing them with so-called defined contribution plans — glorified RRSPs. That in turn means there is now little political support for those in the public sector who still have the prospect of retiring on reasonable pensions. For a politician who wishes to smash pensions for good, it is a propitious time.

The Harper government doesn't want to take apart pensions because they hate old people since many Harper Conservatives are old. But their view of the economy is that nothing should be permitted that might protect those without private means from the need to work — at whatever wage is on offer.

﻿No employment insurance. No welfare. No pensions. No unions.

If those at the top end can save enough to retire comfortably, that’s fine. But in the world view of the Harper government, those who are not so fortunate should just keep on working, at minimal wages if necessary, until they drop dead.

This helps to explain why Harper decided to raise the age of those eligible for old age security from 65 to 67. As the parliamentary budget officer pointed out at the time, there was no overwhelming financial reason to cut back old age security But the harper government did so anyway.

They just don’t like pensions — at least not for other people.

It’s true that Senators and MPs, including Conservatives, still enjoy gold-plated pension plans. A Harperite might tell you that this is merely one of those intriguing contradictions that make life interesting. Most governments make their wishes known to crown corporations simply by limiting their budgets. They then leave it up to the management of these arms-length bodies to work out the details. But this government wants a guarantee that when cuts are made, the axe will fall where the prime minister intends it to fall — on benefits like pensions.

In the case of Canada Post (which has made a profit in the last four out of five years), the government wants to ensure that workers and their union get whacked regardless of the crown corporation’s business needs. Canada’s decimated unions represent only 16 per cent of the private sector workforce. If the public sector unions can be neutered as well, Harper’s cabal will have made great gains in this war they have chosen to wage.

Bill C-51 Will Make It Easier To Throw Canadians In Jail Without a Charge

Ottawa - Canada - February 26 - 2015 - In early February, Canada's Parliament voted down a bill to bring back the mandatory long-form census. The Conservative government's position was that the census was too intrusive. Remember that word: intrusive. Two weeks later they are arguing for the need of mass surveillance and other drastic civil liberty erosions that Bill C-51 brings. The inconsistency is disturbing when the intrusions of a census are deemed unacceptable while the disastrous privacy consequences of Bill C-51 are pushed as imperative.The Conservative government first axed the mandatory long-form census in 2010, citing concerns about personal freedoms. Canada's then Industry Minster, Tony Clement, argued the census was intrusive to Canadians "who just want to be left alone a little bit."Presumably ,Canadians' desire to be left alone hasn't changed, but now Bill C-51 would crumble personal freedoms to an exponentially greater degree than any census could have. The weakened privacy restrictions that allow government agencies to collect and share citizens' personal information is just the beginning of the intrusiveness of this Bill.C-51 is called the Anti-Terrorism Act, but laws already exist to combat terrorism. Opponents argue that the broad language of this Bill will be used to stifle environmental, social and Indigenous movements in Canada. Any action or expressed sentiments that interfere with "critical infrastructure" or the "economic and financial stability of Canada" could be criminalized. Justice Minister Peter MacKay acknowledged that pipeline projects would fall under the definition of critical infrastructure.Back when the Canadian government axed the mandatory long-form census, Clement repeatedly insisted that concern over the threat of imprisonment for not filling out the form played a large part in the government's decision. It's important to note that no Canadian has never been jailed for refusing to fill out the form.Now, the remarkably broad Bill C-51 would make it easier to throw people in jail without a charge. The legal threshold for police to obtain a warrant to arrest individuals who have committed no crimes would be lowered. Canadians could be held in custody for up to seven days without charges. Bill C-51's gives powers of "preventive detention," which means jail time for individuals even when no criminal activity has taken place.The government cited unsubstantiated widespread privacy concerns when they eliminated the mandatory long-form census. After the decision was made, documents obtained under Access to Information revealed that less than 100 complaints were lodged with Statistics Canada. Many of those complaints were not about the supposed intrusive nature of the census, but other concerns like unease over Canada awarding the census software contract to Lockheed Martin, the world's largest weapons manufacturer.The Toronto Star reported Tony Clement saying that if only one Canadian complained about the mandatory long-form census that was good enough to kill it. That is very telling. A cabinet minister admitting that one voice is enough to get the government to make significant changes to Canada's laws illuminates a process that is vastly undemocratic and possibly explains how we could end up in this predicament of Bill C-51. We can safely imagine it is only one particular voice who is heeded, one voice very special to the Harper Government: Harper himself.

Thrown Under the Omnibus: C-51 the Latest in Harper’s Barrage of Sprawling, Undemocratic Bill

Ottawa - Canada - Thursday- May 7- 2015 In 1982, an omnibus bill proposed by the Pierre Trudeau government provoked such indignation in parliamentarians that the official opposition whip refused to show up in the House of Commons. Back then the custom was for Parliament to ring noisy “division bells” when opposition whips pulled a no-show and in this case they rang loudly — for two whole weeks. The noise was so unbearable that parliamentarians were supplied, and this is no joke, with earplugs at the door.While the division bells no longer ring, the passing of the Harper government’s most recent and certainly most contentious omnibus bill, the anti-terrorism bill C-51, has created a tremendous amount of noise. Yet the federal Conservatives seem to have found that old pile of earplugs.﻿The dense, murky C-51 put opposition and the media in an impossible position and Bill C-51 has generated outrage from a broad swath of society.Former prime ministers, national editorial boards, tech experts, legal scholars, civil society organizations, democracy watchdogs and droves of citizens have opposed the bill, saying it goes too far in its fight against terrorism, ultimately undermining the democratic rights of Canadians.Part of that outrage can be tied back to the content of the bill, which affects a grab bag of civil liberties — from freedom of expression to the right to protest.Devon Page, executive director of Ecojustice, says that while he’s encouraged to see so much public engagement with C-51, it was disappointing to see the bill survive a vote in the House of Commons. “It was disappointing to see the bill be passed and to have the outcome the federal government intended: to make a bill of such a mix of issues that opposition parties both support and oppose; that it put opposition parties in an impossible position,” he said. “Opposition parties were handcuffed in their abilities to understand and engage in the issues and vote accordingly,” Page added.“These bills are threat to democracy because they don’t allow fulsome debate,” he said. “To parse that out a bit, because they link typically unrelated issues in bulk, their side effect is … they typically short circuit that.”Page added the Harper government has used omnibus bills to avoid full debate in question period. Even where bills address single issues, question period debate still usually falls short of engaging all relevant issues. But he said, “when you combine issues,” in an omnibus fashion, “the intention is to frustrate debate.” Not only in Parliament, he adds, but for media saddled with complex issues that are difficult to cover.Page said many U.S. states have already done so, with California banning bills that include more than one subject.Laurel Collins, an instructor of social justice studies and doctoral candidate at the University of Victoria, agrees. “Omnibus bills, like Bill C-51, often make proposed legislation inaccessible to the Canadian public,” she said. “This so-called anti-terror bill had so many broad changes that it’s hard to provide people with a comprehensive, yet still accessible critique.” Collins, who studies social movements and nonviolent activism, has been actively speaking out against the bill at public forums in Victoria, B.C. She said Canadians were lucky the NDP filibustered the bill, “which bought us more time to inform Canadians about the far-reaching impacts of this bill, and allowed for a few more expert witnesses in the committee hearing.““Without this, we may not have seen the dramatic drop in public support for Bill C-51.” Collins said the Harper government assumed it could get away with passing the bill without much public scrutiny. “I think it shows their extreme hubris, that even after Canadians overwhelmingly opposed the bill, they still pushed it though.”Like other omnibus bills forced through Parliament by the Harper government, Bill C-51 was a complicated wolf in sheep’s clothing. Called an anti-terrorism bill, opposition parties were faced with the challenge of appearing, unfairly, pro-terrorism if they fought the bill. It’s an old trick: a ‘you’re either with us, or your with the terrorists’ kind of thing. Page said this has the effect of “embarrassing opposition parties by tying in favourable and unfavourable issues” that make it difficult for them to take a strong stance (this is surely the trap the federal Liberal party fell in to).The same goes for other major omnibus bills vigorously fought by the opposition.Omnibus budget Bill C-38 was nicknamed the environmental destruction act by federal Green party leader Elizabeth Maybecause of its sweeping changes to the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, the Energy Board Act, the Kyoto Protocol Implementation Act, the Fisheries Act, the Navigable Waters Protection Act, the Species at Risk Act and many, many more.Seriously, just take a look at all the acts that bill affected. Warning: your hand might get tired from scrolling down the page.That bill was amazingly called the “Jobs, Growth and Long-Term Prosperity Act.” Similarly, the cousin omnibus Bill C-45, which eliminated protection for the majority of Canada’s waterways to the benefit of pipeline operators, was called the “Jobs and Growth Act.” And if that’s not Orwellian enough for you, omnibus Bill C-10, which promised to overhaul Canada’s justice system and fill its prisons, was called the “Safe Streets and Communities Act.” The Canadian Civil Liberties Association called the bill “unwise, unjust and unconstitutional,” a sentiment that was echoed by the John Howard Society, the Canadian Bar Association and the Canadian Council on Refugees among many others.

Although these omnibus bills are perhaps the most well-known, there are many more, according to federal Green Party leader Elizabeth May. Banned in the U.S., Omnibus Bills are a Harper Specialty. “The business of using omnibus legislation to push through things that are unpalatable so they don’t get properly studied and don’t get proper time allocation — this is pure Harper,” May said. “We’ve had two omnibus budget bills every year 2012 ,2013,2014. There were some that were more targeted on the environment than others but none of them were good.”May said in a way, budget Bill C-38 laid the groundwork for some of the worst implications of bill C-51.“Back in the spring of 2012, among the many things that C-38 did…one of the less noticed ones was getting rid of the inspector general for CSIS. So there’s nobody reviewing CSIS activity. There’s the Security Intelligence Review Committee,” she said, ”which reviews CSIC activities, but nobody’s playing an oversight role.”The lack of CSIS oversight has been cause for huge concern considering the expanded powers extended to the spy agency under new rules. This is where the “secret police” criticism comes in.May said Canadians need to make the passage of C-51 into an election issue.“We must make it a sufficient election issue so that whoever become prime minister, whatever party forms government, will have to act on this and repeal C-51.”Beyond that, May said we need to eliminate the use of omnibus legislation in Canada.“It really has to stop after the election,” she said. “We have to take steps to make sure nobody can do this again.”

What do YOU think about the Prime Minister of Canada who is so full of contradictions, arrogance and hyberbole?

Eliminating the long form census is really nothing to do with "protecting the rights and freedoms of Canadians". It is about stifling any process that would generate actual facts that could conflict with the made up "facts" that this government seems to prefer. Actual facts could be used to criticize policies and legislation put forth by the Harper government. The Harper government continuously demonstrates that the rights and freedoms of Canadians need to be trumped by what Harper wants. He doesn't want judges to sentence criminals based on the facts of the case. He wants to impose mandatory minimums based on what he thinks this mean spirited, uninformed, judgmental base voter thinks is tough on crime. He likes to put forth legislation that is easily slapped down by the Supreme Court, and if he doesn't like that ruling he challenges it, and/or appoints more extreme right wing judges. In order to look tough to his supporters, he likes to come up with ever more extreme "anti terror" legislation, even though the laws we already have are adequate. This government will drag us ever further into their ideal corporate police state, and there is only one way to stop them. Heave Steve 2015.

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out--Because I was not a Socialist. Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out-- Because I was not a Trade Unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out-- Because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me."

Yes, the Chancellor said they needed to protect the people and Hindenburg believed him, because no one could think of what would follow. We have always been leery of handing these guys a majority, and they have always said there is no hidden agenda. This is their moment, the fair elections act and now the ability to lockup anyone who disagrees with them. Scary times repeating themselves. In Stephen Harper`s Canada, no dissent is permitted. Dissent = anti-government behaviour = terrorism. Heave Steve and take our country back. He did say that we wouldn't recognize this country after he was finished with it. Ahhhhh .... our very own Patriot Act! It was only a matter of time. This legislation is not aimed at protecting Canadians, it serves only to support the American (and soon to be North American) police state. Canada already allows unwarranted detention. Now this legislation will allow "authorities" to snoop on you and then detain you for no particular reason (until they make one up). Could we not arrest Mr. Harper and the entire PCs for damaging the "critical infrastructure" of Canada and disturbing the "economic and financial stability of Canada" simply because of the facts now made worse by this disgusting Bill C-51 that is no more than martial law?

At least Hitler said his Enabling Act, passed in the spring of 1933, would only be in effect for 4 years. The next day he rounded up any opposition to his government and put them in rehabilitation camps. The Enabling Act was passed to protect German citizens, sound familiar? Maybe Harper and Hitler have more in common than we are seeing. PS these comments would get you jailed in 1933. I wonder if it repeats here in 2015?

“I think Canadians intuitively trust their police and intelligence agencies to do the right thing.” (Defense Minister Jason Kenny when asked about the need for greater oversight for C-51 – CBC Radio, The House, Feb 21, 2015 @ 27:37). You see, we have nothing to worry about because the police only ever go after bad guys, so if they go after you then you will know that you were one of the bad guys too. C-51 will become law unless a sizable number of PC backbench MPs discover how to think for themselves and magically grow some balls. But I don’t have much confidence in that bunch of fear mongering sycophants who always nod in agreement with Harper’s orders.

This Harper government needs to go down for the very thought and I am disturbed that the opposition parties are ineffectual in achieving that. With Bill C-51, I have possibly offended the "critical infrastructure" with this post and if I quit my job the "economic and financial stability of Canada" to be muffled by seven days in jail. Is that it?

This bill puts the Canadian government in line with those governments who wish to destroy citizens' rights. This bill is nothing more than a facade to trample on Canadian liberties. As Ben Franklin stated: ”Those who sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither liberty OR security.”

"Easier to throw Canadians in jail without a charge" -So, how about starting with Mr. Harper. The we can throw away the key.

NDP Leader Tom Mulcair announced Wednesday that his party will oppose Bill C-51, the Conservative's anti-terrorism law. In doing so, Mulcair puts his party clearly at odds with the government and the third-party Liberals. "Stephen Harper's new law is sweeping, dangerous, vague and ineffective," Mulcair told reporters before kicking off debate on the bill in the Commons. "It doesn't do things that are proven to work and puts politics ahead of protecting Canadians. Even when he introduced the legislation, Harper chose a campaign-style event. and made remarks that most regrettably targeted Muslim communities."With that, Mulcair neatly summarized what’s ahead.First, the merits of the bill will be reviewed, if on a truncated schedule. The Conservatives moved Wednesday to limit debate at this stage in the bill's review. Additional motions to cut off debate and study are all but guaranteed as the Conservatives rush to get the bill passed before Parliament rises for the last time ahead of the 2015 election. Second, public safety is shaping up as one of the key issues in the coming campaign. Sides have to be taken, choices offered.Mulcair did what leaders off the Official Opposition do, in announcing the NDP will oppose the bill each and every step along the way. However the Harper government insists their proposals are both common sense and absolutely necessary.

Bill C-51 overrides privacy and other legislative limits to sharing information relevant to terrorism investigations. The proposed legislation gives the Canadian Security Intelligence Services (CSIS) the power to disrupt potential terrorist plots, and police broader powers to detain suspects who "may" carry out rather than the higher standard of "will carry" out a terrorist activity "As the NDP's positions on this issue become more and more irrelevant, more and more unconnected to Canadians' real concerns, their statements on this issue become more and more extreme," Harper told the Commons.

The Liberals, consistent with their place in Canada’s political order, are straddling the centre, positioning themselves between the oppose-at-all-costs NDP and the ram-it-through at any cost Conservatives. Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau says his MPs will support the bill, but plans to introduce two dozen or so amendments aimed at soothing public concerns that the bill gives CSIS too much power to snoop, and police too much latitude to violate Canadians' rights. If the government accepts none of them, well, the Liberals will campaign on them this fall, Trudeau says. The amendments include a mandatory review of the entire law after three years, and proper parliamentary oversight of CSIS and the police.Like Mulcair, Trudeau reached out to Canadian Muslims, assuring them that the October attacks on two Canadian soldiers in broad daylight were not viewed as consistent with their values. And just to show he’s also capable of a bit of political posturing, Trudeau got in a partisan shot of his own aimed at Mulcair. "The fact is the NDP has not once in its history supported strengthening anti-terror measures in this country."But what about the bill itself?‎At the core of the NDP's concerns: the legislation sets out a long list of activities that could trigger intervention by security agencies: from blocking pipeline construction to threatening the economic stability of the Canadian economy. Mulcair said it's a gross overstep, but consistent with the Conservatives’ strategy of using perceived threats as a political bludgeon.The prime minister said it’s Mulcair who is pandering for votes, because the bill includes explicit guarantees that terrorism activity does not include "lawful advocacy, protest dissent and artistic expression." How that will be interpreted isn't clear, and lawyers everywhere are no doubt plotting the first charter challenge once the bill becomes law.The other central arguments against the bill are that there's no meaningful political oversight of CSIS or police actions, and as Mulcair set out Wednesday, no evidence new powers are even needed. He ran through the examples: the arrest of the Toronto 18; the foiling of a plot to blow up a VIA train; and just last week, the arrest of young people who allegedly planned to open fire on shoppers at a Halifax mall. All accomplished under existing laws.For that Harper had no answer.

Lessons from 2001Trudeau notes the Liberals had to act quickly in 2001 in response to the Sept. 11 demolitions, bringing in draconian measures to deal with the new reality that planes could be used as weapons of mass destruction in North America. There are lessons to be learned in the exhaustive review done in 2001, when the Liberals introduced sweeping anti-terrorism measures.First: there were full public hearings by both the Commons and Senate into the bill. The two houses did their work at the same time, often nterviewing the same witnesses. It expedited the process, without rushing through the law. Canadians heard arguments both for and against.Second, it led to some meaningful amendments, including a five-year limit on the most controversial powers: investigative hearings and preventive arrest.In the end, those powers were never used, even as police and security agencies confronted increasingly sophisticated, increasingly local threats to public safety. But 2001 wasn’t an election year — 2015 is. And as MPs begin their review of C-51 they’ll have one eye on the bill before them, and the other on what it could mean in the campaign that beckons in the months ahead.

Ottawa - Canada - January 14 - 2014 - "There's no accountability. It's completely, completely broken," said former Parliamentary budget officer Kevin Page, who was hailed as a "national hero" for insisting that federal government be accountable for its spending. Before he stepped down in 2013, Page exposed the federal government's overspending of billions of dollars on F-35 jets, the war in Afghanistan, and challenged Harper's claim that government couldn't afford to maintain Old Age Security for 65-year-olds. He took the federal government to court for refusing to provide details on its austerity budget, which earned him the wrath of the Prime Minister's Office. Page spoke out about the lack of trust in public service, as well as the damaging effects of government muzzling of scientists. "I hear this more as I get on to airplanes, but the public servants, they're saying, 'Kevin, you have no idea how bad it is. They're pulling us off planes, saying we can't go to conferences, we can't speak to anybody,'" he said in a video interview with political group Operation Maple.

Great firewall of Ottawa: Harper banned employee access to news site

Ottawa - Canada - January 06 - 2015 - A federal agency blocked public employees from accessing news at Blacklock’s Reporterusinggovernment internet servers, Access to Information documents revealed. Shared Services Canada imposed the government-wide blackout on website access by hundreds of thousands of staff last August. “This is outrageous conduct,” Blacklock publisher Holly Doan wrote on her publication's site after learning about the ban. “This is not only Orwellian, it appears to breach the government’s own guidelines on workplace internet use.” Blacklock's said on its news site that it first realized something was wrong after its subscribers in federal departments said they weren't able to access the site's news content. They later discovered their site had been blocked by Shared Services Canada, an agency created in 2011 to "fundamentally transform how the Government manages its information technology". Shared Services oversees the telecom services for 43 government departments, ranging from Aboriginal Affairs to Environment and Health. According to Blacklock's, Shared Services Canada gave no explanation why it blocked the news site. After filing a Access To information request, Blacklock's found out that its site was banned on August 22, then revoked on September 9 -- the same day that Blacklock's filed a request for records from Shared Services Canada.Although records suggested that several IT staff were monitoring the news site, Blacklock's publisher insists that there was no cause for surveillance or censoring. The publication, which prides itself as "the only reporter-owned and operated newsroom in Ottawa", says it covers news about bills and regulations, as well as federal court and public accounts. Subscribers to the publication can get access to record of all registered meetings between MPs, senators and staff, and accredited lobbyists.But while Blacklock's reports extensively on federal government, it is not associated with any activities that could warrant censorship, the publisher said. “At no time did our newsroom pose a security threat to the nation,” said Doan. A comment is pending from Shared Services. There was no comment from our Prime Minister.

Story by: Jenny Uechi / The Vancouver Observer

Stephen Harper does U-turn on election law gagging advocacy groups

Ottawa - Canada - December 15 - 2014 - Prime Minister Stephen Harper used to contend that money does not influence the outcome of elections.He used to rail against any attempt to limit the amount of money outside advocacy groups could spend during campaigns. And he used to strenuously object to any attempts to compel those groups to disclose from whom they got their money or how they spent it. That was, of course, before he became prime minister.

Now, Harper heads a party that accuses labour unions of trying to "bully and influence our elections from the outside" and routinely uses the spectre of dastardly union politicking to drum up donations the Conservatives say are urgently needed to ensure victory in next year's election. And he heads a government bent on forcing unions to disclose the salaries of their employees and just how they spend the money they collect from members' dues.

Former Liberal cabinet minister Don Boudria stops just short of calling it hypocrisy. "I think this is a case of that was then, and this is now," said Boudria, who was named in a court challenge launched by private citizen Stephen Harper in 2000 against the then-Liberal government's so-called "gag law" limiting spending by outside third parties during election campaigns.

And there's one more irony: since taking power in 2006, Harper has not lifted a finger to repeal the gag law he once fought all the way to the Supreme Court. "There's been a lot of things that have disappointed me and disillusioned me about Stephen Harper as prime minister, and that's one of the big ones for me," says Gerry Nicholls, Harper's former sidekick at the National Citizens Coalition. As president of the NCC, Harper saw the gag law as an unconstitutional attempt by Liberals to silence conservative advocacy groups. "The obvious intent of the gag law is to stifle independent voices at election time. The government wants to shut out and shut up groups like the NCC," Harper declared the day he launched the court challenge.

After two lower court victories, Harper eventually lost the legal battle in the Supreme Court. But when he was running to become leader of the Conservative party in 2004, he signed a pledge to repeal the gag law should he ever become prime minister.

Nine years in power later, three of them at the helm of a majority, and the gag law seems confined to the dustbins of Harper's mind. Third parties are still prohibited from spending more than a total of $150,000 on advertising during a general election, including no more than $3,000 in any single riding. They must also report details of their advertising expenses to Elections Canada and disclose the donors whose money made the ads possible.

"What philosophically has changed between Stephen Harper in 2014 and Stephen Harper in 2000, when we were going after these laws? I'd really like to know," Nicholls said. Nicholls surmises Harper's retreat may be a function of the fact that it would be a hard sell politically to scrap or loosen restrictions on spending during elections. People tend to favour the notion of getting filthy lucre out of the business of politics, notwithstanding the libertarian argument that Harper and the NCC used to make about the free marketplace of ideas and how no amount of money could ever convince people to vote for a bad idea. More significantly, Nicholls believes Harper has discovered it's in his political self-interest to stifle his own ideological opponents.

"People are all in favour of free speech as long as they agree with the speech. All too often, if they don't like the groups which are speaking out then suddenly, 'Yeah, we've got to pass a law to stop them.' " It's no secret the Harper regime doesn't like unions, a number of which have vowed all-out warfare to bring down the Tories. Although unions are already prohibited from donating to political parties or candidates and are severely restricted, as third parties, in what they can spend on advertising during campaigns, it seems Harper wants to ratchet the restrictions up a notch.

A backbench Conservative MP's private member's bill, strongly backed by the Prime Minister's Office, would force unions to publicly disclose the names and salaries of all employees earning more than $100,000 and to reveal how much of their time each of those employees spends on political activities, lobbying and other non-labour-relations activities.

Conservatives are clearly banking on such transparency angering dues-paying members and shaming union bosses into curtailing outlays for political activity. "The union bosses are against it because they don't want people, including their own members, to know how they spend their money," Conservative Senator Bob Runciman, who is sponsoring the bill in the Senate, told the upper house last September.

The bill has been wildly denounced as shoddily drafted, unconstitutional and an invasion of privacy. But it has an obvious application to the looming federal election. As the Conservative Party warned in a recent fundraising email: "Sid Ryan" — head of the Ontario Federation of Labour — "and people like him want to bully and influence our elections from the outside, unaccountably spending all kinds of money to hurt us — without ever running for office. "We won't let that happen. We're going to take them on and we're going to win."

Maybe so. But given the severe restrictions on union campaign spending compared to the $20-plus-million the Conservative Party is entitled to spend, Nicholls said it will hardly be a fair fight. And the old Stephen Harper would have agreed with him.

Ottawa - Canada - January 05 - 2015 - Military personnel guide a CF-18 Hornet into position at the CFB in Cold Lake, Alberta on Tuesday October 21, 2014. The flags had barely been folded up in Kabul, marking the formal end of Canada's counter-insurgency war with the Taliban, before CF-18s were dispatched to begin pounding extremist targets in Iraq. Story by Jason Franson / THE CANADIAN PRESS

Ottawa - Canada - January 06 - 2015 - An update is expected today on Canadian military activities in the skies over Iraq as part of the international campaign against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. Since the combat mission began in November, the Defense Department says it will provide the latest data on the number of sorties in Iraq. The bombings were made by six fighter jets, a refuelling plane and two surveillance aircraft. There is no word yet on civilian deaths due to Canadian participation.Among the most recent activities were bombing missions on New Year's Day when CF-18s attacked ISIL fighting positions and storage facilities used by the Islamist group. No word on the exact location of these targets because the Defense Department did not provide specific details about the targets. Information from the American military suggests Canadian planes struck and destroyed shipping containers, an armoured vehicle and a front-end loader.The American military says the missions on January 01, 2015 were part of 11 attacks carried out that day in Iraq against ISIL which holds about a third of Iraq and neighbouring Syria.Canada is part of the American air war in Iraq. So far Canada has not joined the American coalition campaign bombing ISIL targets in Syria.

How did Harper become Canada's Prime Minister in 2008 with only 39% of the vote? What went wrong?

The Conservatives’ latest plan to fight climate change is a bizarre, pre-election ploy that will never be carried out

Toronto - Canada - May 16 - 2015 - Did David Suzuki suddenly find a way to exercise mind control over Prime Minister Stephen Harper and the Conservatives? This in the wake of the Harper government’s bizarre announcement Friday that Canada will reduce its industrial greenhouse gas emissions to 30% below 2005 levels by 2030, and may consider buying international carbon credits or offsets to do so.First, there is no conceivable way, based on its record to date, that the Harper government is going to reach that target for three reasons.First, because it’s a ridiculous target that is more onerous than previous ones it set and then ignored. Second, because it excludes Canada’s oil sands, which, while generating a small part of our overall emissions, is the sector of the economy where emissions are rising the fastest. Third, because Harper can’t commit future Canadian governments — and we could have a new one this fall — to an emissions reduction plan that extends to 2030.As for purchasing international carbon credits to achieve this target, the Harper government previously rejected such action ­— which it used to deride as buying “hot air” from Russia — since coming to power in 2006.When Canada gave notice of its intention to withdrew from the Kyoto accord in December, 2011, then environment minister Peter Kent said it would have cost taxpayers $14 billion to buy enough carbon credits to comply with the United Nations climate change treaty, which expired at the end of 2012. Further, the global carbon credit market is overrun by fraud — awash in carbon credits for which there is no actual reduction in greenhouse gas emissions linked to climate change.That’s to say nothing of the political corruption in many countries that allows this fraud in the buying and selling of carbon credits to flourish, and the fact that organized crime is involved in carbon credit scams globally, including tax fraud, in the multi-billions of dollars. Why should Canadians fork over even more money than they do now to heat their homes in winter in order to pay corrupt foreign governments to pretend they’re lowering their emissions, while we pretend this is an effective way of fighting climate change, aka global warming?Harper’s Conservatives are clearly not serious about the climate change plan they announced Friday. It’s a mirage intended to get them past the October election on an issue they feel politically vulnerable about, after which it will disappear like a puff of smoke, whether they win or lose.The alarming thing is that heading into the election, we will now have the three major party leaders — Harper, Justin Trudeau and Tom Mulcair — all talking about their respective climate plans, none of which has any basis in reality.The reason the Harper government won’t meet this latest promise to reduce Canada’s emissions to 30% below 2005 levels by 2030, is the same reason it would not have met its previous commitment in 2009 to reduce them to 17% below 2005 levels by 2020. It’s the same reason the Jean Chretien/Paul Martin Liberal government of 1993 to 2006 failed to meet its target of reducing emissions to an average of 6% below 1990 levels between 2008 and 2012, and its earlier commitment of 20% below 1988 levels by 2005. It’s the same same reason the Brian Mulroney Conservative government of 1984 to 1993 failed to meet its promise to reduce emissions to 20% below 1988 levels by 2005, which is where Chretien got the idea from.The reason is that we live in a big, cold, northern, sparsely-populated, industrialized, fossil-fuel exporting country, with one of the best living standards in the world, because of the benefits of fossil fuel energy. We have no reason to pay “indulgences” to the global planners at the UN, who are using the issue of climate change not to save or cool the planet, but to redistribute global wealth. We have no reason to feel guilty, not only because we contribute less than 2% of global greenhouse gas emissions, but because we are not part of the most serious problem by far when it comes to global warming, which is the use of coal to generate electricity.

China, the world’s largest emitter, gets 80% of its electricity from coal, India, the third largest, 70%, and the U.S., the second largest, almost 40%. In Canada it’s under 11%. We are not global laggards in fighting climate change. We are global leaders and it’s time we stood up and said so.​

Ralph Nader tells Stephen Harper to stop acting like George W. Bush

February 18, 2015The Right Honourable Stephen Harper, P.C., M.P.80 Wellington StreetOttawa, ON K1A 0A2Dear Prime Minister:Many Americans love Canada and the specific benefits that have come to our country from our northern neighbor’s many achievements (see Canada Firsts by Nader, Conacher and Milleron). Unfortunately, your latest proposed legislation—the new anti-terrorism act—is being described by leading Canadian civil liberties scholars as hazardous to Canadian democracy.A central criticism was ably summarized in a February 2015 Globe and Mail editorial titled “Parliament Must Reject Harper’s Secret Policeman Bill,” to wit:“Prime Minister Stephen Harper never tires of telling Canadians that we are at war with the Islamic State. Under the cloud of fear produced by his repeated hyperbole about the scope and nature of the threat, he now wants to turn our domestic spy agency into something that looks disturbingly like a secret police force.Canadians should not be willing to accept such an obvious threat to their basic liberties. Our existing laws and our society are strong enough to stand up to the threat of terrorism without compromising our values.”Particularly noticeable in your announcement were your exaggerated expressions that exceed the paranoia of Washington’s chief attack dog, former vice-president Dick Cheney. Mr. Cheney periodically surfaces to update his pathological war-mongering oblivious to facts—past and present—including his criminal war of aggression which devastated Iraq—a country that never threatened the U.S.You are quoted as saying that “jihadi terrorism is one of the most dangerous enemies our world has ever faced” as a predicate for your gross over-reaction that “violent jihadism seeks to destroy” Canadian “rights.” Really? Pray tell, which rights rooted in Canadian law are “jihadis” fighting in the Middle East to obliterate? You talk like George W. Bush.How does “jihadism” match up with the lives of tens of millions of innocent civilians, destroyed since 1900 by state terrorism—west and east, north and south—or the continuing efforts seeking to seize or occupy territory?Reading your apoplectic oratory reminds one of the prior history of your country as one of the world’s peacekeepers from the inspiration of Lester Pearson to the United Nations. That noble pursuit has been replaced by deploying Canadian soldiers in the belligerent service of the American Empire and its boomeranging wars, invasions and attacks that violate our Constitution, statutes and international treaties to which both our countries are signatories.What has all this post-9/11 loss of American life plus injuries and sickness, in addition to trillions of American tax dollars, accomplished? Has it led to the stability of those nations invaded or attacked by the U.S. and its reluctant western “allies?” Just the opposite, the colossal blowback evidenced by the metastasis of al-Qaeda’s offshoots and similar new groups like the self-styled Islamic state are now proliferating in and threatening over a dozen countries.Have you digested what is happening in Iraq and why Prime Minister Jean Chrétien said no to Washington? Or now chaotic Libya, which like Iraq never had any presence of Al-Qaeda before the U.S.’s destabilizing military attacks? (See the New York Times’ editorial on February 15, 2015 titled “What Libya’s Unraveling Means”.)Perhaps you will find a former veteran CIA station chief in Islamabad, Pakistan, Robert L. Grenier more credible. Writing in his just released book: 88 Days to Kandahar: A CIA Diary (Simon & Schuster), he sums up U.S. government policy this way: “Our current abandonment of Afghanistan is the product of a… colossal overreach, from 2005 onwards.” He writes, “in the process we overwhelmed a primitive country, with a largely illiterate population, a tiny agrarian economy, a tribal social structure and nascent national institutions. We triggered massive corruption through our profligacy; convinced a substantial number of Afghans that we were, in fact, occupiers and facilitated the resurgence of the Taliban” (Alissa J. Rubin, Robert L. Grenier’s ‘88 Days to Kandahar,’ New York Times, February 15, 2015).You may recall George W. Bush’s White House counterterrorism czar, Richard Clarke, who wrote in his 2004 book, Against All Enemies: Inside America’s War on Terror—What Really Happened, “It was as if Osama bin Laden, hidden in some high mountain redoubt, were engaging in long-range mind control of George Bush, chanting, ‘Invade Iraq, you must invade Iraq.’”Mr. Bush committed sociocide against that country’s twenty-seven million people. Over 1 million innocent Iraqi civilians lost their lives, in addition to millions sick and injured. Refugees have reached five million and growing. He destroyed critical public services and sparked sectarian massacres—massive war crimes, which in turn produce ever-expanding blowbacks.Canadians might be most concerned about your increased dictatorial policies and practices, as well as this bill’s provision for secret law and courts in the name of fighting terrorism—too vaguely defined. Study what comparable practices have done to the United States – a course that you seem to be mimicking, including the militarization of police forces (see The Walrus, December 2014).If passed, this act, piled on already stringent legal authority, will expand your national security bureaucracies and their jurisdictional disputes, further encourage dragnet snooping and roundups, fuel fear and suspicion among law-abiding Canadians, stifle free speech and civic action and drain billions of dollars from being used for the necessities of Canadian society. This is not hypothetical. Along with an already frayed social safety net, once the envy of the world, you almost got away with a $30 billion dollar purchase of unneeded costly F-35s (including maintenance) to bail out the failing budget-busting F-35 project in Washington.You may think that Canadians will fall prey to a politics of fear before an election. But you may be misreading the extent to which Canadians will allow the attachment of their Maple Leaf to the aggressive talons of a hijacked American Eagle.Canada could be a model for independence against the backdrop of bankrupt American military adventures steeped in big business profits. That model might help both nations restore their better angels.Sincerely,Ralph Nader

Chris Lloyd resigns as ConservativeMPP for the riding of Papineau

Montreal - Canada - May 12 - 2015 - Chris Lloyd says he's surprised he lasted as long as he did as a Conservative candidate, given that he didn't go to great lengths to hide the fact that his campaign was part of an art project. Lloyd resigned as the Conservative candidate for Montreal's Papineau riding after a CBC News investigation revealed his campaign and party involvement in Montreal were part of a decade-long art project.

"I gave them a link to the 'Dear PM' blog and I told them about my letter-writing project which I think maybe raised some eyebrows, but I think they didn't go quite as deeply as they could have," he said. Chris Lloyd has been writing a letter to the prime minister nearly every day since 2001. His topics run from the mundane to more critical. 'I really wanted to see if I could push the Conservative message.'The artist said it wasn't his intention to deceive his supporters, or add cynicism to the democratic process. "I have to admit, I think our democratic process is an incredibly cynical, broken, kind of twisted affair. We generally don't elect independent candidates," he said. "I really wanted to see if I could push the Conservative message, run under it and actually make a difference."

Lloyd hoped to 'weather media storm'In an open letter to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, published late Tuesday night on his blog "Dear PM," Lloyd described the fallout after the news surfaced. "I met [redacted] at a café where I tried to convince him we could weather this media storm together, but to no avail," he wrote. "He presented me with the resignation papers and I signed."

Chris Lloyd, a native of Saint John, was acclaimed in February as the candidate to run against Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau in the Montreal riding of Papineau in this year's federal election. At an art discussion in Fredericton in March, Lloyd said he was a member of all political parties at one point, as well as a member of Leadnow, a group bent on preventing a Conservative majority. It was at that same art discussion that Lloyd said he's been writing about his plan to become a political candidate for years.

"I'm going to mess with your party, I'm totally, like, going to wait till the writ is dropped, then it's going to be party time," he said. In his latest blog post, Lloyd said he tried to explain the "messing with" quotation to the person he met with, but didn't have any luck.

The artist has no regrets. The artist added that he does not regret anything, doesn't consider his political career to be over, and thinks there are still opportunities for some interesting marriages of art and politics, leading up to the election. On his blog, Lloyd said he hopes the experience will provide "fresh insights into the nature of, and the relationship between, the personal and the political in this, the age of social media."

He wrote that he believes making art is "an inherently political act — sometimes more political than we realize."

CBC News

In the federal election, Liberals and Tories will be fighting a two-front war

Toronto - Canada - May 15 -2015 - Given a choice, nobody would prefer fighting a two-front war to focusing on one opponent. But does anyone in Canadian politics still have a choice? For the longest time, only the NDP needed to fight on two fronts. Tom Mulcair needed to knock down the Conservatives and undermine the Liberals.Mulcair’s path to victory required him to both make the case for change, and convince people that he was able to win the election and deliver that change. Being 7 or 8 points behind the Liberal Party made the second part of that claim seem more hopeful than factual. The Alberta victory by Rachel Notley has reminded everyone how things can change, and that for average voters (not other partisans), the NDP is far from a toxic brand.Meanwhile, both the Liberals and the Conservatives could afford to focus most of their attention on each other. The Conservatives had been training their weapons mostly on Liberals and raising questions about Justin Trudeau’s fitness for office. Their goal was to see the Liberals and the NDP split the “change” vote equally. They were happy enough if they hobbled the Grits, even if it meant seeing some gains for the NDP. Lately, this approach had been showing some promise for Mr. Harper. But, too much of a good thing isn’t always a good thing. Conservatives may now need to beware of what they were wishing for.In the wake of Notley’s win, pollsters (including me) are looking to get a handle on what it means for the federal NDP. Some may conclude it’s a blip, while others may think that this is the start of a big wave. My own instincts are to take more time and maintain an open mind about what might or might not be under way. While it’s far from certain that the federal NDP are surging – it would also be a mistake to assume that it can’t possibly be happening, too.So far, the national appetite for change has been broad, but not entirely enthusiastic. Fifty per cent want change, another 19 per cent would prefer it but don’t feel all that strongly. Should that 19 per cent develop a head of steam, federal Tories could face real trouble. In Alberta, change didn’t really look like it had a chance, until it suddenly became an unstoppable force. That sort of pop-up phenomenon is becoming a new normal in this era of low-engagement politics. Polls well in advance of a campaign are best read with this in mind.The Conservatives can thus ill afford to focus only on Justin Trudeau and the Liberals. They need to fashion an argument that will put a ceiling on NDP growth. This won’t be easy for them, because they have little feel for voters who are tempted by the NDP. Over-the-top attacks could end up sounding like arrogance. Politics is difficult, sometimes.For the Liberals, the clearest path to a win looked to be about taking the fight to the Conservatives, and along the way rallying those voters who wanted change around the only brand that looked as though it could deliver it.The Notley win, if it produces a sustained ripple effect for the federal NDP, will require the Liberals to adjust. They will need to firm up the market for change, and argue that Liberal change will be better for you than what the NDP is offering. The idea that change could only plausibly happen with a Liberal vote is not as obvious a proposition as it seemed only a few weeks ago.In the run-up to this long-anticipated federal election, the mood in Ottawa is highly charged, and many seem tempted to offer forceful, if ill-advised, declarations based on every new piece of data. But what we know now is not much different than what we’ve known for some time: This election will feature three well-funded, highly competitive parties, each led by talented politicians. While some may crave a prediction, sensible observers know that the outcome is becoming less, not more, predictable as the writ period draws near. This campaign hasn’t even really begun.A federal election has not officially been called yet, but party leaders and their political machines have wasted no time zeroing in on the key ridings where they want to pick up seats, or need to defend them. In Montreal, in one of the country’s safest Liberal ridings, the party is leaving nothing to chance. And in Truro, N.S., the Conservatives are taking a challenge from a one-time Tory personally. It all highlights the powerful political maxim that it is best be humble about your support – even a handful of seats could mean the difference between winning and losing. The campaign of inches has begun.

BRUCE ANDERSONBruce Anderson is the chairman of polling firm Abacus Data, a regular member of CBC The National’s “At Issue” panel and a founding partner of i2 Ideas and Issues Advertising.He has done polls for Liberal and Conservative politicians in the past, but no longer does any partisan work. Other members of his family have worked for Conservative and Liberal politicians, and a daughter currently works for Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau.He writes a weekly digital column for The Globe and Mail.Special to The Globe and Mail

Just one day after Justin Trudeau was anointed leader of the Liberal Party in April of 2013, the Conservative Party unleashed a barrage of attack ads saying he was in “way over his head.”

One of the ads mocked Trudeau for having been a camp counselor, rafting instructor, drama teacher and boasting one of the worst attendance records in the House of Commons. “Now he thinks he can run Canada’s economy?” – it sneered over footage of Trudeau undressing and prancing around on a stage wearing a tank top.

Trudeau had run smack into the buzzsaw of the Conservative Party’s election machine — an entity that’s always on “permanent campaign” mode. To the Tories, electioneering is a year-round operation – not just started when the writ is dropped – that’s allowed Stephen Harper to win three elections in a row while mauling and belittling his opponents.

Trudeau, for example, has been a constant target of Conservative ads over the past two years, with the latest portraying fake job interviewers listing all the reasons why “He’s Just Not Ready.” And it seems to be working: the Liberals are currently languishing in the 25 per cent range.

For election consultants, the Conservatives’ success at the polls is no accident. “Harper is going to win [the next election,” predicts Warren Kinsella, former campaign strategist for Jean Chrétien and a well-known Toronto-based election consultant.“He’s got a very efficient vote, he has a whole bunch of new seats in the British Columbia and Ontario and Alberta, and those are in ridings where he’s highly competitive. And he’s going to have the ability to motivate those voters because the quality of his research is better than the other two parties.”On one hand, it’s no mystery why Harper has ruled the roost since 2006 despite lacking charisma or popularity: the progressive vote is split between the Liberals, NDP, Green Party and Bloc. Due to Canada’s first-past-the post electoral system, a politician can become prime minister with a mere 34 per cent of the vote – and garner a majority with just 38 per cent (the Conservatives won a majority in 2011 with less than 40 per cent).

Indeed, the Chrétien Liberals won three back-to-back majorities between 1993 and 2000 largely because the right-wing vote was split between Reform, the PC and Canadian Alliance parties. Now the same problem is bedeviling the left.“Until the progressive side gets its act together, Harper is going to win because [the progressives] are splitting the vote,” observes Kinsella. “It’s a perfect cleavage.”Although splitting the vote helps Harper, it overshadows how the Tories exploit the weaknesses of our electoral system and have built a well-financed, well-oiled machine that’s increased their seat count every election cycle since 2004.“When it comes to tactical execution, these guys are very effective,” concedes Scott Reid, former deputy chief of staff and spokesperson for Paul Martin Jr. during the 2004 and 2006 elections. “They parse the electorate, they rarely in my mind bother to message anyone beyond their base… Harper’s no dummy, that’s for sure. It’s not so much a strategic brilliance as it’s tactical excellence where they’ve prospered.”Many progressives might assume Harper’s election machine cannot overcome his current negatives – including a faltering economy, the Senate spending scandal, Bill C-51 and the fact that nearly all of his highest-profile ministers have quit. Yet as the Republican Party in the US has demonstrated, being unpopular or even despised does not preclude you from winning."It’s an ethic of ‘I am willing to burn the house down so I can own the lot’,” explains Mike Casey, a veteran Democratic communications consultant based out of Virginia. “Stephen Harper is willing to burn the house down to own the lot. ‘I will bring a gun to a knife fight. You can call foul while you’re lying bleeding on the floor' — that is the kind of ethic.”“The American political left took a long time, thirty-plus years, to learn this about the American right,” Casey continues. “They lost election after election after election. Throughout my career, I watched Democratic or progressive politicians get their heads handed to them by conservative politicians and they cried foul over dirty tactics after the election was done. It just doesn’t change anything. I call it principled loserism.”

﻿How Harper's winning machine was built﻿

Harper’s first experience at trying to win a federal election as leader of the newly-constituted Conservative Party took place in the winter of 2004. By then, Harper had recruited his former mentor, University of Calgary political scientist Tom Flanagan, to be his campaign manager and oversee assembling an election machine.Flanagan says there were certain benefits of creating a new party from scratch. As he recalls: “There was a rare opportunity to rebuild and borrow best practices we saw elsewhere.”

Two initial hindrances soon became advantages: the fact they were not attracting enough corporate donors, and couldn’t access membership lists of provincial counterparts.This forced the Tories to build a direct-mail fundraising operation from the ground up, which soon gave them a financial advantage over their rivals, especially after Chrétien changed the fundraising laws as he was leaving office in 2003 that banned corporate donations.“[The Liberals didn’t have a good grassroots fundraising system of their own,” explains Flanagan. “I don’t know what they thought they were doing, it’s a really strange piece of history. But the new Conservative Party was better poised to take advantage of the new fundraising laws. So we developed all these tools of direct mail and telephone solicitation and we managed to integrate them… into almost a perpetual motion machine."And it worked by doing the large-scale voter identification during campaigns, building up lists of millions of sympathizers and supporters and then going back to them later and asking them for money... That’s what has been bringing in the money ever since.”During the 2004 election, the Tories made missteps, including eschewing negative ads, and making the incendiary allegation that Paul Martin Jr. supported child pornography late in the race that cost them dearly. They also struggled with marketing Harper and faded in the backstretch, although picked up 99 seats and knocked the Liberals down to minority status.In the aftermath of that election, the foundations of today’s Conservative machine solidified. The Tory brain trust knew elections were decided by a tiny minority of voters – all of 500,000 from a pool of 23 million eligible voters. While the Conservatives' base was anywhere from 25 to 30 per cent, to get over the top, they needed to woo only another 10 per cent.“As far back as Reform Party days, there was a general understanding that it was very unlikely that a conservative party was going to win the old-fashioned way, which was getting above forty odd percent of the popular vote,” says Jim Armour, a former Harper staffer and Ottawa-based communications executive.

“For (us) to win, our vote was going to have to be more efficient and more targeted. That was the general philosophy and it became more and more true and the tactics became more and more honed… as we went along.”

"Slice and dice" politics: Zoes, Steves and Eunices

But who were those key swing voters? One person who had a notion was Patrick Muttart, who became one of Harper’s top political advisers after 2004. Muttart had risen through the ranks of the PC and Reform parties before becoming a public relations manager of a hotel chain and working for Jaime Watt, a former Mike Harris political adviser in Toronto.“I think [Muttart] really helped us clarify our approach to communications – to targeting who we wanted to reach and what sort of messages would work,” says Flanagan. “He was a fulcrum for a more sophisticated approach that paid off in the 2006 campaign.”For one thing, Muttart had developed a rich knowledge of how conservative parties worldwide were winning elections, in particular in Australia. He was intrigued by the success of Australian Prime Minister John Howard, a conservative who ended 13 years of Labour rule in 1996 before going on to win three consecutive elections. Howard adopted a market segmentation approach to appeal to “the battlers” – hard-working families struggling to raise their kids on small incomes. Focusing on this group had helped Howard win and Muttart was determined to find equivalent groups for Canada’s Conservatives.“Close campaigns are decided by the least informed, least engaged voters,” Muttart once told Jennifer Lees-Marshment, a New Zealand-based political scientist. “These voters do not go looking for political news and information. This necessitates brutally simple communication with clear choices that hits the voter, whether they like it or not.”One of Muttart’s messages to Harper was to not waste time and money on voters who would never vote Conservative. This was a break from the past when Tories and Liberals conducted mass marketing campaigns to appeal to median voters. Now, the Tories were looking at segment marketing – with the idea of turning a coalition of subsegments of the electorate into a governing force.This approach is known as “hypersegmentation”, whereby the party’s polling would identify voter’s demands and then allow the Conservatives to design ads to appeal specifically to them, helped by focus groups. Flanagan has called it “slice and dice politics.”

Muttart broke the electorate down into types and gave them names: such as the “Zoes” — young, single, female, progressive downtown apartment-dwellers who would never vote Tory and therefore should be ignored. On the other hand, there were the “Steves and Heathers” – married, Protestant, small business owners with children in their 40s living in the suburbs; or the “Eunices” – widows in their seventies living on a modest pension – all of whom could be persuaded to vote Conservative if ads and policies were designed for them.

Kinsella says the Conservative’s financial advantage means they can do better research on who their potential voters are. And their direct-mail apparatus connects them directly to those voters.“What the Conservatives have been able to do for a decade now is high quality research – the kind of research that only previously Coca-Cola and Procter and Gamble could afford,” he says.“But the Harper guys, led by Muttart… would do psychographic research, geo-demographic research so they wouldn’t just know what party you and your family voted for historically, they knew what route you took to work, they knew what toothpaste you used, what TV shows you watch between 7:00 and 7:30. They had an intense amount of data, detailed stuff, that assisted them not only on doing broad-based campaigns but very narrow-casted campaigns where they could do drop pieces, mail pieces or emails to you that are very specific to issues that you are concerned about but your neighbor might not be … It’s part of the reason that Harper won – he knew better what people were thinking than his opponents did.”In the end, all of this research told the Conservatives to focus on seniors, working-class suburbanites (especially in the voter-rich suburbs of Toronto and Vancouver), and families. The Conservatives developed policies to pander to these segments too: Families were extended tax credits; seniors offered income splitting; or the Jewish community received full-hearted support for Israel.Another effective strategy was championed by Jason Kenney, who would later be Harper’s immigration minister (and current defence minister) – tapping into the rich pool of voters among new immigrants. These voters had traditionally voted Liberal, but Kenney saw that many of them were social conservatives and felt the Tories had ignored them for too long.

“They stole that constituency from the Liberals,” says Kinsella. Indeed, between 2007 and 2013, financial contributions from the Canadian Chinese community to the Tories almost doubled.

The Tories still had the problem of Harper’s personality: He was not an easy guy to sell. “We did all sorts of focus groups after the 2004 election [on Harper],” recalls Armour, “and I remember going into a room where Tom Flanagan was going through all of the topline results and a report back from the pollsters and him turning to me and saying ‘My God Jim, it’s worse than we thought — they see him exactly as he is’.”There were attempts to humanize Harper by having him wear sweaters, or photo ops of him throwing a football on the front lawn of Parliament Hill. In the end, says Flanagan: “Ultimately, the main thing has been to portray him as a competent and reliable leader. Someone you don’t necessarily have to feel warm about but someone who will get the job done and deliver results…You’re not going to turn him into pretty boy Justin Trudeau… You showcase what you have.”

Going negative

One reason Harper lost in 2004 was that the Liberals used attack ads effectively characterizing him as a mean-spirited Republican disguised as a Canadian. Harper had decided against attack ads during that election. “That was a mistake,” says Gerry Nicholls, a Toronto-based political consultant and former Harper colleague. “He learned a lesson from that election and got tougher and did more effective work in terms of defining his opponents in his advertising campaigns.”Flanagan also taught Harper the importance of using the “politics of fear” — that running campaigns on hope doesn’t work. Flanagan has said fear is the most “powerful political emotion” in elections. So it’s no accident Harper has suggested terrorists may be lurking anywhere in Canada; he’s fuelled fears of Muslims by declaring that some of them practice ways “contrary to our own values”; and he’s sparked fears about murderers roaming free on our streets.Another early political lesson Harper took to heart occurred just after he became leader of the Conservative Party in 2004. The Liberals launched attack ads headlined “Stephen Harper Said,” which displayed quotes from his past suggesting he was far more reactionary than the moderate he was trying to portray himself as.

This attempt to define your opponent before you’ve had the chance to define yourself was borrowed by Harper and has been skillfully wielded ever since. Thus, every time the Liberals anoint a new leader the Tory attack machine swings swiftly into gear to define them: Stéphane Dion as a hapless bungler; Michael Ignatieff as a opportunistic visitor who had spent 34 years outside Canada and had no economic policies; and Trudeau as a pretty boy rich kid too immature to ever be considered prime minister material.“I can recall the Ignatieff team shortly after he became leader suggesting that Ignatieff would not be vulnerable to negative advertising,” relates Reid. “I think the exact phrase was there was a ‘New Paradigm’ – that a leader of his kind would not be vulnerable to negative advertising. What insane hubris, what insane hubris! Now, you look back and all of the people around him are saying that he was a victim of the paid negative campaigning of the Conservatives. But that was all predictable.”New Zealand political scientist Jennifer Lees-Marshment, who’s studied the marketing methods of the Harper Conservatives, says their attack ads are “incredibly strategic and very clever” because “they’ve tried to undermine Justin Trudeau’s brand. They are trying to brand him as someone who would never be able to lead Canada. So they were attacking his governing abilities. They have played on people’s fears.”

﻿Fraud, vote suppression and vote buying﻿

When federal NDP senior campaign adviser Brad Lavigne is asked what keeps him up nights strategizing against the Tories, he responds: “In the last three elections that they’ve won, their team has been charged with cheating. What safeguards going into the 2015 campaign makes this less likely? There is none…What keeps me up at night is their track record at breaking the rules in order to win.”While it’s unclear employing illegal methods to win elections is tipping the balance in their favour, the Conservatives do have a long history of dirty-tricks and unethical behavior.During the 2006 election, in what later became the “in and out scandal,” the Tories got around spending limits by transferring money between the party and its riding offices. Having reached their $18.3-million spending limit, the Conservatives transferred $1.3-million to 67 ridings, which then funneled it back to the national party to spend on advertising.In 2011, four members of the party (including two senators) were charged for their involvement in this laundering scheme — and the party forced to repay $230,198. Nigel Wright, Harper’s former chief of staff, was listed among those involved.In 2008, Dean Del Mastro, an Ontario Tory MP and Harper’s former parliamentary secretary, engaged in election fraud when he deliberately broke spending limits by funneling $21,000 of his own money to his campaign, and then falsified documents to hide the donation. Two weeks ago, Del Mastro was sentenced to a month in prison and four months of house arrest and barred from running for office for five years.Ironically, Del Mastro had been picked by Harper to be his spokesperson on election fraud issues.

n 2011, just prior to election day, some voters received recorded calls that told them to go to the wrong polling station. The targeted voters didn't support the Conservatives. These robocalls were linked to a political consulting firm the Conservatives hired. Michael Sona, a low-level Conservative party staffer, was sentenced last year to nine months in prison for his role. Two judges found that it was likely other senior Tories were involved.

During this same election, at least 14 Tory MPs employed Front Porch Strategies, an American election firm based out of New Jersey that works for the Republican Party. Front Porch sent their American staff to Canada to work on the ground – which is in contravention of Canada's election laws. The Tories then tried to cover up the fact they employed Front Porch.

In response to these scandals, the Harper government overhauled Canada’s election laws last year with the Fair Elections Act. This act makes it easier for the Tories to commit election fraud because it weakened the power of Elections Canada, effectively muzzling the chief electoral officer from communicating with the public and MPs about investigations, and cut off the agency’s investigations arm, while polling supervisors are now to be appointed by the incumbent party’s candidate or party. (Elections Canada used to appoint them.)

The law may also help the Tories engage in voter suppression. The Council of Canadians and the Canadian Federation of Students launched a case at the Ontario Superior Court to set aside key parts of the new voting rules on the grounds that they will make it very difficult for many students, First Nations, the homeless, as well as disabled and elderly people to establish proof of residency so they can vote. This could tip the balance in many ridings.

The Conservatives are also engaging in old-fashioned vote buying. For example, they recently forgoed a competition and began talks to order a naval supply ship to be built at the Davie Shipyard near Quebec City, based in Conservative Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney’s riding. Davie was passed over for big-ticket federal government shipbuilding contracts in 2011 because it was financially ailing. It recently laid off 200 workers.

Last week, the Globe and Mail ran a story saying a federal infrastructure fund aimed at fixing up arenas and community centres was being spent disproportionately in ridings represented by Conservative MPs, as the Tories prepare to roll out a nearly identical fund in the months before the fall election. Ridings that elected Tories in 2011 received, on average, 48 per cent more money from the $150-million Community Infrastructure Improvement Fund than ridings that elected opposition MPs, the Globe found. Some of the best-funded ridings are held by cabinet ministers, including Infrastructure Minister Denis Lebel, associate minister of Defence Julian Fantino and Health Minister Rona Ambrose.

Finally, the Tories are using taxpayers’ money to run thinly-veiled election ads dressed up as government ads. The Toronto Star estimates that $500-million has been spent by the Harper government since 2009 promoting its own programs – $75-million in 2014 alone.

Path to power...again?

As the October 19 election draws near, it’s clear Harper is sticking to the same formula that worked in the past. He will be promising tax cuts, portraying himself as a good economic manager, while pushing the fear buttons – all aimed at appealing to enough Canadians to get him re-elected. “He has been disciplined and dedicated to this model,” says Scott Reid. “So even when it’s been a year out from the election campaign and things are looking tough, and you have enormous turbulence worldwide with a financial crisis, he’s been very focused and very devoted to this model… [while] his opponents have made big errors.”While many Canadians might be puzzled why Harper seems intent on alienating so many voters, there’s a method to his madness: he knows who supports him and who does not.“They are unusual in Canadian political history… in that they are dismissive of those who are not part of their base, or their potential coalition,” observes Reid. “So if you belong to that cohort of voters that would never vote Conservative, they couldn’t give a shit what you think."This government will be flagrantly indifferent to those who will not vote for them. They will punish those voters, they will redistribute budgets, they don’t care, they don’t care and they’re willing to take the criticism. Most politicians love the love. Stephen Harper is a weird guy; he’s not addicted to affection from voters. He’s therefore willing to be more utilitarian than most politicians because most politicians are far more sensitive to criticism.”